Arkhangelsk expects up to 20 ship calls from China in 2025, double as many as in 2024
ST. PETERSBURG. March 11 (Interfax) - Arkhangelsk expects up to 20 ship calls from China in the spring-summer navigation season of 2025, Arkhangelsk Region Governor Alexander Tsybulsky said during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
"We have rolled out a route with the Chinese, a container one, the first ship call was in 2023, Shanghai-Arkhangelsk. There were 10 ship calls last year. This year we are planning up to 20 ship calls. The port [of Arkhangelsk] has come to life. It is beginning [to master] new expertise in transporting container cargo. I think that this creates the preconditions for thinking about the implementation of such a strategic project as the construction of a new deep-water area of the port," Tsybulsky on Rossiya 24 TV.
Tsybulsky said that Rosatom state nuclear energy corporation is interested in the project. Chinese partners have also been showing interest in constructing a deep-water area at the port.
As reported, China's NewNew Shipping Line in July 2024 launched a new trade route, Arctic Express No. 1, along the Northern Sea Route (NSR), connecting the main ports of China, Shanghai and Ningbo, with Arkhangelsk via the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The cargo was transported via railway to Moscow and St. Petersburg upon arrival in the capital of Pomorye. There are plans in 2024 to transport over 20,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers along the multimodal corridor.
As reported, the Russian government in the autumn of 2023 approved a comprehensive plan to develop the Arkhangelsk transport hub up to 2035. Creating a deep-water area at the seaport and constructing a new terminal have been cited as the plan's main objectives in the order of the Cabinet of Ministers. It was also predicated that the estimated capacity of the terminal would be 25 million tons per year by 2040. The Dvina Bay of the White Sea was named as the location for the project. Capex for the project should be 327 billion rubles.
Sberbank and the Eurosib holding, on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum SPIEF-2024, the Arkhangelsk Region, in the summer of 2024, signed an agreement on joint operations on implementing a project to construct a new deep-water terminal.